


Come out on the other side

by Tanacetum



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 02:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14761029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanacetum/pseuds/Tanacetum
Summary: They won. This world, these new people, the ways her family changed without her—this is all for keeps.So, now what?Four chapters, using prompts from Blupjeans week 2018.





	1. The end

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Aftermath - The days/weeks/years after Story and Song

Lup floats above the battlefield and imagines herself as one ghost among many. She exists at the crude conjunction of two images, superimposed and bleeding into each other. Stacked carbon papers blotted with moisture or celluloids curled and smoking at the edges. Damage forging brittle bonds between them that’ll ensure the whole thing crumbles when peeled apart.

The alien sun hangs above her. It’s both brighter and dimmer than she’d pictured during her years in velvet dark. She focuses on the sunlight, sifts the knowledge she synthesized from a dozen worlds: electromagnetic waves radiating across space, filtering through the planet’s atmosphere and down to her on the surface. She thinks of what the heat would feel like against skin. She thinks of thermoreceptors, of the axons she no longer has, of her synapses left to dust and rot on a cave floor. 

She thinks that she can fact-check herself now, open the texts and refresh her memories. She thinks the sky here is beautiful, Barry’s exact favorite shade of blue. She thinks she’s had a good day.

The battlefield stretches around her. It’s scorched, blood-soaked, and empty. Packed up and cleared out, survivors having hauled off the corpses of the fallen. But not their ghosts. Not Lup.

The difference between them and her, she thinks, is a trick of the light. She’s a ghastly cloaked specter. They could be all around her in the astral plane, just on the other side of invisibility. It’s a comfort.

The only movement around her is the breeze, and one set of footsteps as significant to her as a heartbeat. “Hey beautiful!” Barry calls from below. “Everyone else is out, so uh, I guess I’ve kind of gotta try those cannonballs now.”

He’s smudged with dirt from forehead to chin. He’s got sweat stains across his back and under his arms. One of his hands clutches his wand in a white-knuckled grip, the other a spare bracer with the button to call their ride depressed. The glass cannonball glints in the sky, streaking towards them like a diving hawk. When she floats down to Barry he shies back into her ethereal robes.

“Really not lookin’ forward to this,” he says, this man who’s fought horrors on a hundred worlds, who’s made a career of flouting death, who’s reforged his own soul. In captivity she lost her count of the times he’s died for her. When the orb settles on the ground he’s gone fully green.

“Should I meet you up there, babe?” she teases. He gulps, already nauseous from nerves. “Or do you want me to ride with you?”

They’re launched up to the moonbase and Lup feels more grounded than ever. She’s so busy ribbing Barry that she rests on his lap without having to think about it. She can’t feel him, but later he tells her that she had the weight of a spiderweb, or a gossamer breeze. It’s something, at least.

 

#

 

Taako doesn’t have enough skin either. He’s two lives stuffed into one body, she realizes, when she finally sees the seams. Taako moves in the kitchen like he’s watching for an executioner’s axe, stutters more than ever, and looks at her with flint in his eyes. There’s a new part of him that doesn’t know what to do with a sister. She struggles to not think of it as cruel or ugly—until she sees him throw his arms around a handsome man with cut-glass cheeks and a little boy in outsize spectacles. Then she just struggles to not feel rejected, and guilty.

Everything they lived through together is over. Their days on the road, their mission, the Hunger, the strife. Their endless journey ended in imprisonment and amnesia, locked her in stasis and transfigured him into a man who remembers growing up unloved. He’s existed outside of Taako-and-Lup, while she’s barely done any existing for years.

But that’s over too. Every fragile dream she whispered to Barry, every extravagant fantasy she and Taako entertained themselves with—it’s all in her reach, all possible here. She has some thousand-plus plans for building herself a home in a new world, one for every sleepless night on the Starblaster.

Except that, when she remembers making those plans, she also remembers drawing air into her lungs and laughing vibrantly. She remembers gesturing with a champagne flute, liquid sweet and sticky on her tongue, and declaring that _Taako_ could be a celebrity if he liked. She and Barry were going to settle down for a while, enjoy the peace, the stability—and yes, even the monotony. _Especially_ the monotony; she deserves to spend a month lounging in her pajamas for every year she’d run herself ragged saving a world.

Gods, she hopes she can still do the pajama thing. Barry promised to revive her. It should be easy. She remembers several methods that could work, depending on available resources.

She also remembers rising from the umbrella—phantasmal, resplendent, brimming with scorching power—and not being able to hug the other half of her soul. And then seeing him in the Grim Reaper’s arms that same day.

Lup’s known about Taako and Kravitz since their first date. She tried to blast Kravitz, Taako handed her vessel over to his inspection, and Lup has to stall her spiraling thoughts and remind herself that he would never choose to give her up. She refuses to feel a pang of doubt over where Taako’s loyalties lie.

She fails. She skulks around the moonbase, entranced by the impression of endless rooms lit gleaming and bright. The reality is that she’s years out of practice with navigating, so she glides through the same half-dozen hallways for forty minutes before Lucretia finds her.

“Lup,” she says, leaning heavily on the hollowed-out husk of her staff at the intersection of two corridors. Every door ahead and behind them is shut tight.

“What’s up, Creesh?” Lup says. She knows her toothy smile is unnerving, but she can’t think how else to greet Lucretia. She’s the one of them who’s changed the most, in Lup’s estimation. The boys have their scars, but this wrinkled, stately woman is so far from their chronicling prodigy as to be almost unrecognizable. She even moves differently, shoulders set and spine straight, each step balanced on brittle hips.

But maybe she never knew Lucretia. Lup couldn’t have imagined her using Fisher to erase their family any more than she could’ve imagined her founding and leading an organization as the Madame Director. From a secret base on a second fake moon. At least that’s wild enough that Lup’s sure it must be reality. Her own imaginings could never surprise her like this.

“I’m so sorry,” Lucretia says. Her jaw’s set and her face is blank, but the raw pain in her voice makes Lup flinch. “Shit, I didn’t mean to make this about me. I—I want to know how you’re, adjusting, and if there’s anything I can do for you.”

Lup floats in place. At least the uneasy crackle of static around her lich form gives her something to feel.

Lucretia’s mask slips when her eyes widen, and she babbles on, throwing out words like lifelines. “Or if there’s anything my organization can do! I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Lup finally wrenches a single voice from her discordant mind to project. “Creesh, it’s okay!” she says. Lucretia’s racing heart and clenching throat betrays her emotions, but Lup finds it easy to keep her tone even. It’s just her memory of what she sounded like. “I meant it when I said we were chill, babe.”

“Yes—but—” Lucretia pauses. Closes her eyes, collects herself. When she reopens them her face is impassive once more, smooth and controlled. The undercurrent of nervousness she wore throughout her youth is gone, replaced by something Lup reads as grief. “Taako’s looking for you. He called me.”

“Oh, dang,” Lup says. “Guess I need my own stone of farspeech, huh? Dunno where I’d stash it in my ghost jammies, but, yeah.”

“Lup, _he_ called _me_ ,” Lucretia says. She leans forward on her staff and Lup feels like her gaze is boring straight through her. That’s kind of ridiculous, considering that she’s an intangible phantom, flickering and fading intermittently. She’s not sure what’s going on here.

“Taako hates me. He’d never speak to me again if he could,” Lucretia reminds her gently. Lup fizzes with sparks and Lucretia talks over the crackle. “It’s okay, what I did to him is—unforgivable. It’s not intentions that matter, when you hurt someone.”

“But it worked out,” Lup says. “He’ll get over it, you’re family. We won! Everything’s fine now.”

“He’s upset,” Lucretia says. “You didn’t tell him you were leaving. Why are you out here alone? Without Taako, or Barry?”

There’s a moment where the hallway falls away. All that gleaming white fades, not to black, but to the morning Lup stood in the warm fragrant kitchen with a coarse scrap of paper and hunted for a smooth plastic pen and put tacky fresh lipstick on to leave a kiss. The sound of a thin wail reaches Lup before Lucretia’s face resolves again. It’s her widened eyes and outstretched hand that make Lup realize she actually screamed.

Lucretia sits with her on the ground in the middle of that hallway, her wrinkled blue robes overlapping with Lup’s diaphanous red ones. Lup’s relieved to be coaxed into idle chit-chat. She needs the noise in exactly the way she doesn’t need air as a lich. Every time her mind wanders back to the thousand other conversations she had with Lucretia like this—tucked away on the Starblaster, the only two women against eternity, mourning the death of one of their friends or a whole planet or sometimes just the fact that they were perpetually surrounded by rowdy boys—Lucretia drops something new on her. An anecdote, an adventure, crazy stories about the hilarious things Lup missed. A creepy bartering warlock and Reclaimer pranks and Lucretia trying to win over the Goldcliff militia with the face of a teenager.

In a span of time indeterminate to Lup, punctuated only by the distant footsteps of people moving out of view, the haze lifts. The image of here and now resolves. Lup can see how it’s distinct from the coiling memories she relived, can think that was only a decade instead of ad infinitum, forever, the end.

Lucretia dials Barry and Lup reassures him through the stone. He’s heading right over, even though she says she’s fine, she promises. Taako’s not coming along to show him the way. Barry says he’s fully capable of finding Lup in one single building. With directions, even. This is easy mode and he’s a pro at searching for her. It’s by the bitterness underlying his voice that Lup knows she really scared him.

“I’m a mess,” she says after he hangs up. She’s talking to the empty air, or maybe to Lucretia. “Gotta get it together, he’ll be here in what—uh, t-ten? Ten minutes?”

“At most. He’s probably jogging, so I’d say six,” Lucretia says. Her fingers flex on her staff, her boots shuffle against the floor. Lucretia wants to stand and leave. Lup can see the decision to stay put settle on her face, resignation cementing into courage. She remembers that Taako’s not the only one with good reason to be angry at Lucretia.

“Lup,” Lucretia whispers, when they hear footsteps pounding towards them around the corner. “You don’t have to keep it together for him. He loves you.”

 

#

 

That’s kind of the problem, though. Barry loves her passionately, dizzyingly, in the way that only someone with a beating heart _can_ love. Lup has to be honest—she’s not feeling so great. She’s been a lich several times before, once for almost a whole year. The texts warned about irrationality, fury, and sadistic rage; torrents of emotion that would erode her sanity. She and Barry were too careful and smart for that. What Lup remembers is being content. A little flat, sure, but she could joke and laugh and keep herself busy. Sometimes fighting for tangibility was hard on her, especially when she went for months giving spectral hugs that she had to concentrate to feel. It kind of sucked. But it would suck worse to be dead for real and leave Taako and Barry and the rest of her family alone.

Except that’s exactly what she’d done. Lup can’t be mad over Lucretia’s mistakes when she can’t deal with her own. Can’t agree that Taako has good reasons to hate Lucretia when Lup has better reasons to hate herself.

A decade without a body (and that’s rounding down). A decade locked in the dark, in her own head, fighting for every single impression of the outside world. Not sure whether she hallucinated Magnus and Taako and Merle in that cave until they didn’t recognize her. Not even her nightmares were that cruel.

Taako using her prison as a focus kept her focused. Fighting the Hunger was easy, the hundredth iteration of the same old strife.

But they won. This world, these new people, the ways her family changed without her—this is all for keeps.

So, now what?

 

#

 

“I missed you,” Barry says to her, hands folded on top of the table. Lup’s having a day where she’s able to sit across from him. She can’t feel the chair, but her spectral form rests on it instead of hovering. She’s been testing herself by picking up every small object in reach, waiting for one to slide through her fingers. Each success sits needle-sharp in her empty ribcage and rattles around with puncturing dread.

Right now she’s got a fork. Magnus’s, except he used his hands to shovel down lunch before bolting off to give them privacy. She twirls it and says, “I missed you too, babe. So, so much.” Then she smiles.

“I feel really fucked up about it,” Barry says, so bluntly that the fork drops to clatter on the table. “Shit, sorry.”

She waves it off. Doesn’t even let herself look down. “No biggie, babe. Comes with the whole lich deal. Did Taako say he was making dinner?”

“He said he’s not. Uh, cafeteria food tonight for us. But, I—I don’t think I’ve told you what the worst thing was. About the time I couldn’t—find you. Those years.”

Barry’s making unflinching eye contact. Lup can tell she won’t be able to shake him off. She’s not ready for this conversation, but it’s past time. He loves her. And she owes him. It’s her fault he’s upset. “I don’t think you did either, babe. Spill the beans.”

Every line of his body shouts that he wants to hug her. It’s not fair to either of them. “We figured it out pretty quick—that you were going after, uh, the gauntlet. We figured—we knew that you would come back to us, if—if you could.”

“Of course, _definitely_ ,” she says, leaning forward. The outer folds of her robes phase into the table. “I never meant to—” her voice breaks. She doesn’t even have a _throat_ , that’s _dumb_. “I wanted to come back. I’m sorry.”

He reaches a hand across the table to rest inside her spectral ones. It’s pointless. Another reminder that she hasn’t felt his touch for years. No, it’s sweet. He meant it as a comforting gesture. His fingers must be going cold and tingly from necrotic energy. “Lup,” he says. “I never thought you abandoned me.”

“I basically did though,” she says, feeling static roll off her in waves. “I could’ve brought along you or Taako or _anyone_ and I didn’t. Because it was my mess to clean up, my stupid bullshit fire gauntlet. Like, look at this idiot over here, making basically the worst, worst weapon of mass destruction this plane has ever seen.”

“Hey—” Barry says, trying to cut her off. He’s wincing from red sparks skipping off his arms.

She withdraws her hands and plows ahead. “I knew the Light was dangerous and I chose to make that thing. I thought hey, so long as I’m doing evocation, how about all this does is shoot flames—can’t fuck up too bad with that! It’s just, just damage, there’s no eldritch horrors or whatever here.”

“That wasn’t a bad call,” he says. “You uh, I’m glad you didn’t see what those liches were doing with my bell.”

“It was a _dumb_ call,” she says. “A _thousands of people dead_ dumb call. And then I took Cyrus down there with me when I should’ve known he couldn’t resist the Light! I had that fucking umbrella I never put a single safeguard on, and then I let him stab me!”

“ _It’s not your fault that bastard killed you!_ ” Barry shouts. She hasn’t heard him raise his voice in eons. He sounded furious. He draws in a shuddering breath and pushes up his glasses, scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm. “Lup, listen to me. That wasn’t your fault. Don’t—don’t ever think that.”

“I left you and Taako alone,” she says. “I got myself trapped. It—it was bad, Bear. It was the worst.”

“I worried it was my fault,” Barry says. Lup freezes. “That was the worst part for me. I thought, if I hadn’t argued with Lucretia—her plan couldn’t have worked, I know that _now_ , but at the time… I thought you, you went out there alone because—” he gulps, tears spilling over his cheeks. She floats straight through the table to get to his side, hanging off his shoulders like a ghostly cape. “I thought I made you feel you couldn’t trust me, to—be on your side, in getting the g-gauntlet off the field.”

“Gods,” she whispers against his cheek. “What kept me going, that whole time I was in that umbrella? Was that I knew you’d find me. You or Taako, I knew you’d never give up _because_ I trusted you.”

“I’m so fucking glad,” he says, choking off sobs. “You’ve gotta know that I love you. I don’t—it doesn’t matter whose fault any of this was. Not me or, or even L-Lucretia, and especially not you. I missed you so much—I only ever wanted you back.”

Lup holds him while he cries. His shoulders shake, his nose clogs up, and every minute he’s in her arms she feels the outline of her form becoming starker and more distinct. By the time his breathing evens she can almost feel him. She has to let go too soon; his skin’s reddened from necrotic energy, an angry rash ringing his neck that surely extends down past his shirt collar.

She drifts away and rotates in place. She takes in the dorm for the first time; there’s wood shavings all over the coffee table and mud crusted into the carpet, when the Magnus she knows wouldn’t want to get caught being so careless. The potted plants are drab, utterly mundane, and dusty—not at all sexy, and she hates that she knows Merle’s tastes. The kitchen looks like it belongs in a frat house. There’s a dirty cheapo aluminum pan and paper plates on the counter and no oven mitts, no proper utensils, no spice rack or hanging pots or food processor. She wouldn’t know Taako lived here if she hadn’t seen the floor of his bedroom doing double-duty as his closet, heaped with clothing and accessories.

Her expectations don’t match reality, now that she can hold those two images separate. Something’s very wrong here. Something that goes beyond the course of passing time. Lup can only guess from snatches of conversation overheard in the umbrella, and the questions the boys never asked each other.

Lup realizes she lied when she said everything was fine. Lucretia probably figured that out immediately. But Lup knows two things to be true: they’re still family, and this isn’t the end.

“I’m sick of being dead,” she says. “You think Taako’s reaper boyfriend will throw me in ghost jail if we get our necromancy on?”

Barry chuckles. He’s turned around in his chair to watch her, leaning with arms crossed around the backrest. “I wouldn’t worry about him.”

“Oooh, ominous, babe. I like it,” Lup grins. “Don’t fear the reaper, right? Can we take him, or should we just go on the lam?”

“I don’t think we’ll need to uh, go that—extreme. Taako’d dump him if he went after you,” Barry says, snapping his fingers. “Like _that_.”

“You think so?” Lup says, hope singing in her chest. “I’ve seen those cheekbones. Skeletor’s _hot_.”

“I know so,” Barry says. “Cos you’re his twin, Lup. He’s always gonna put you first. Same as I do.”

Lup twirls. Her robes billow in the air around her and she laughs, experiencing the rush of freedom all over again. “Kravvy definitely can’t handle three of us at once. Did you get to see when Mags and Merle and Taako handed him his ass, working with about ten brain cells between them? I missed most of that, but it sounded _hilarious_.”

“I was watching, mostly, and it was—kind of the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever witnessed?”

“Dish deets. I need this story.”

Barry grins at her, soft round cheeks and dimples. The joy on his face is the most beautiful thing Lup’s ever seen. “I love you,” she says.

“I love you too, Lup,” he replies, automatic as breathing and heartfelt despite that. “I’ve got an idea that involves talking to Kravitz, actually. Now that we’re, well, saviors of all of existence.”

“Whatcha thinking, babe?” she says. “Blackmail? Going off the grid? I’m so down with blackmail.”

“Did you get to see my cave lab?” he asks. “Cos I’m thinking—I bet we can get clearance to bend the rules, one last time.”


	2. Pour one out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walking was Lup’s idea, but it’s Barry’s fault they’re late. He’s spent the last four blocks swaying into her side to make her laugh and stumble. They escalate into a shoving match right before rounding the corner to Chesney’s open porch. Lup pushes him against the wall and they make out to the laughter and music of a party getting underway. The stucco wall grinds into his shoulders as she sinks her mouth into his, heated and forceful. He captures the swell of her lower lip between his teeth and laves his tongue across it. Her chapstick tastes like fresh sweet melon. He’s blushing forehead to chest when she breaks the kiss and steps back. She skips towards the porch with a wink and a curled, coaxing gesture. He stumbles after her as if pulled by gravity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Interactions with the family

Barry waltzes up to Chesney’s with a grin on his face and Lup on his arm. It’s a gorgeous day, humid and hot in the way he used to find intolerable. Bottlenose Cove’s been rebuilt with so many green spaces and flowering plants that the whole city’s suffused with perfume, especially around the tourist areas. Barry’d enjoy it more if he knew Earl Merle less personally.

They’re ten minutes late and counting. Lup wanted to walk through town on foot. She’s sightseeing, and also showing off her absolutely gorgeous sundress, a fluttering confection of rose and coral that makes her glow brighter than the afternoon sun. Barry’s in cut-off jeans and a Hawaiian shirt that was respectably buttoned until Lup got her hands on it. He can’t feel self-conscious about his pasty pudge when she’s as thrilled to be on his arm as he is to have her there. They’re a perfect pair, he thinks, even with slathered sunscreen as the only shared fashion statement between them.

Walking was Lup’s idea, but it’s Barry’s fault they’re late. He’s spent the last four blocks swaying into her side to make her laugh and stumble. They escalate into a shoving match right before rounding the corner to Chesney’s open porch. Lup pushes him against the wall and they make out to the laughter and music of a party getting underway. The stucco wall grinds into his shoulders as she sinks her mouth into his, heated and forceful. He captures the swell of her lower lip between his teeth and laves his tongue across it. Her chapstick tastes like fresh sweet melon. He’s blushing forehead to chest when she breaks the kiss and steps back. She skips towards the porch with a wink and a curled, coaxing gesture. He stumbles after her as if pulled by gravity.

They’re sober, despite all appearances to the contrary. This will be the first night Lup’s able to drink. She came out of the tank six weeks ago like Aphrodite rising from the sea. Then her body needed some tuning-up, spells and potions to restore the work she and Taako put in before they joined the IPRE. And to stabilize her brain chemistry after years spent dead and imprisoned.

Lup’s been chatting with her family over farspeech, but only Barry and Taako have seen her since resurrection. She always feels that people deserve her at her best; vivid, uplifting, and resplendent. Not curled up and shaking on the couch, overwhelmed by the stress of relearning her body. She and Taako have separate approaches to dealing with their shared hang-ups over vulnerability. Taako retreats and deflects. Lup charges at problems head-first, pouring out her strength for others until she’s left empty.

For those first couple weeks she ground herself down doing physical therapy. Barry fretted over the battles she waged with her clumsy limbs, warring with frustration and fatigue until she collapsed and cried. He sat with her and stroked her hair until she let him bundle her off to a steaming bath. He massaged the knots from her sore muscles and explained that he was deeply at peace. That she didn’t have to do anything to make him happy; he just wanted to help her however he could. Things were easier after that.

She’d say she’s all better now. Barry’d remind her it’s a process. The reunion party tonight is technically her debut. He’s nervous on her behalf. But then, he’s always nervous. He shelters in the swirl of her dress as she strides ahead of him. She reaches back to slip her hand into his and they sneak onto the porch.

Chesney’s is done up in sparkling streamers and flowering vines. The floor’s cluttered with tables draped in eye-searing neon paisley. Their family’s a lot bigger now and nearly everyone’s here, waving and shouting greetings. Magnus leaps up from his table and bolts to them with arms extended. Lup throws herself against his chest and tugs Barry along with her into a group hug. Someone short collides with the back of Barry’s knees. He almost trips over a tiny dwarven boy when Magnus releases him.

“Oh my GOD it’s a mini-Merle!” Lup squeals. She scoops the kid up and swings him as he laughs uproariously. He’s got Merle’s crinkly eyes and wild hair. It’s amazing that any of them have kids now, Barry thinks. He always figured he and Lup would be the first, with all the time they spent puzzling out biology and debating adoption whenever they mused on the future. Maybe they could still have some—except that they’re slated to be reapers. Kravitz warned that they could be out on missions for months at a time.

Barry watches Lup and Magnus tickle Mookie. Angus and Mavis are seated at the table behind them, poring over books spread across it in the middle of a party. He grins. They’ve got kids in the family already and he’s gonna make a great uncle. And the future’s not even here yet.

Merle leaves off mixing drinks and trots over to them. “Hey sis! Feel like teaching my little spitfire here how to dance?”

Lup grins and swoops down to hug him. “Hey foxy gramps! That sounds awesome!” Davenport and Hekuba, chatting over margaritas bigger than their heads at the bar, whip around in unison. Barry rolls his eyes at Merle’s raucous guffaws. Lup cants her shoulders at a sharp angle to match Merle’s height and they each take one of Mookie’s hands. They swing him into the air with his little legs kicking madly. Barry steps back in a hurry and follows Magnus to his table.

Magnus drops like a stone into his rattan chair with an enormous cracking creak. “These are so flimsy,” he says, winking at Barry’s concerned wince, “and Merle said I could make him new ones if they break.”

Barry laughs. “Sounds like a lot of work to me. Aren’t you busy with your dogs?”

“Yeah!” Magnus says, eyes lighting up. He gushes about the success of his school and all eight thousand of his dogs by name until well after Mookie’s tired Merle out. Lup chases him through the swinging doors to the kitchen. Taako’s initial shriek drowns out the country pop from the speakers along the wall.

“You guys need to visit me at Raven’s Roost!” Magnus says. “I’ve got plenty of spare bedrooms. I need to show you the town, it’s beautiful.”

“We’d like that,” Barry says. His eyes are still on the kitchen door, listening to Lup’s teasing lilt as she torments her brother. Magnus follows his gaze.

“It’s good to have her back,” he says warmly. “I was really worried, y’know?”

“Yeah, it was rough,” Barry says, turning back to Magnus. He’s smiling until he sees that Magnus is fiddling with a wedding ring on his finger. “Taako, uh—said you were married.”

Magnus nods, expression rueful. “Julia would’ve gotten along with Lup like a house on fire,” he says. “She always had that same energy.”

“What was she like?” Barry asks. He presses his shoulder into Magnus and Magnus throws an arm around him in a half-hug.

“She was the kind of person who inspired others,” Magnus says, drumming fingers on Barry’s shoulder. Barry doesn’t know if he’ll ever be used to seeing Magnus older than twenty. His jaw’s sharper and his skin more rugged, but at least he’s got the same familiar restlessness. “She was always the first to leap into action when anything needed doing.”

“Wow—faster than you, really?” Barry says.

“You know me—” Magnus says with a chuckle. “I’m all for rushing in. But Julia cared about people. She always noticed when someone was in trouble. Like, it’s one thing to have a family to look after—but Julia treated the whole town like it was hers.”

“She really sounds incredible.”

“She was. She was good for me, y’know? Taught me to care about the Roost.”

“That’s where your dog school is, right?”

Magnus leans back into his chair and shifts to make it creak. “Yup. It still feels like home. We saved it together from—some asshole. He had mercenary thugs terrorizing people on the streets. Julia got up on a pub table in front of all our friends and said that we should kick his ass.”

The kitchen doors bang open. Mookie darts out and streaks off towards the beach. Lup flows after him. She waves at Barry distractedly and scans the room. She spots Lucretia in the corner, up against the wall at the table furthest from the kitchen with some of her bureau employees. Lup marches all the way across the room with her shoulders set. She throws her arms around Lucretia before she can stand up, trapping her in a suffocating hug. Barry surmises that Taako’s hiding. Lup’s not impressed. Davenport has more reason to be furious with Lucretia than anyone and even he tolerates sharing space.

 “When’d you and Julia get married?” Barry asks.

“About a year after—everything,” Magnus says. “I wish you could’ve been there. She was beautiful. Pretty much the whole town came out and cheered for us. It was—it was so nice. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy now, with how things turned out—but I thought we were gonna have forever, you know? I never thought I’d lose her. I’m not even sure how it happened.”

Barry knows what happened. That was the other half of Taako’s explanation—that Magnus had been married, and the mad governor Kalen had murdered her. Kravitz and Barry talked over the capabilities of his bell. Its effects should fade in time. Someday Magnus’s family will be able to tell him the whole story.

And then they’re going to murder the hell out of Kalen. Barry’s coming along, in his official capacity as a reaper or not. It’ll be a bonding experience.

“Hey, you know what I’m thinking, Mags?” Barry says abruptly. “As long as I’m gonna be kinda fuckin’ around in the afterlife for work, I bet I can—uh, pass along mail, or something.”

Magnus’s arm tightens on his shoulders. “Barry—you—you’re serious? You think you can—don’t get thrown in ghost jail for me.”

“I’ll run it by the big boss first, I promise,” Barry says. And then he’ll try to do it anyway. He knows he’s kind of on probation because of the lich thing. And resurrecting Lup. But if saving the whole damn multiverse isn’t enough to earn him leeway with the rules—well, then he’ll just have to work at not getting caught. Lup’ll be all for it, and he knows he can count on Taako to distract Kravitz.

Magnus snuffles into his hair and thanks him profusely. Barry pats his arm as they watch Merle stack a tray with cocktails. He’s been making them in bulk to show off his booze collection to Davenport. He waddles a circuit around the room and hands drinks out, even coming up with something non-alcoholic for the kids. Barry and Magnus end up with the kind of syrupy cosmopolitans Merle used to make on the Starblaster. They really only drank those because it’s hard to keep a liquor cabinet well-stocked while running from the apocalypse, but nostalgia makes them palatable.

Magnus is gulping his drink down when his dragonborn friend leaps onto his back. He splutters and slops pink liquid into his beard. A moment later Lup’s arms snake around Barry’s neck and she kisses the top of his head. “How’s it going over here, babe?”

Barry turns to hug her. She plucks at the glass in his hand and he trades it for a kiss. “I’m doin’ great. Are you?”

“You know it, babe,” she says, draining his glass.

The next moment the room shakes with a crash. Carey’s added weight finally collapsed Magnus’s chair. His legs flail up and he kicks the whole table over. Lup and Barry cling to each other laughing and move to Angus and Mavis’s table while Merle browbeats the culprits into cleaning up.

“What’s up over here, nerdlings?” Lup asks, pulling out a chair for Barry. He leans over to check out the books they’re reading—looks like fiction, but they’ve got highlights and annotations more thorough than the notes he took at university.

“There’s a new Caleb Cleveland book coming out next month and someone leaked part of a manuscript!” Mavis says. She and Angus give them eager looks from behind round-framed glasses, practically matching. They’ve both got bushy hair too, though hers is braided in tight pigtails while his is stuffed in a fancy cap.

Angus nods enthusiastically. “Yes, and there are multiple conflicting statements concerning its veracity. We’re assembling evidence right now to see if the leaked material matches the expectations set by the previous installments.”

“Do you know that series?” Mavis asks.

“I’ve actually read the first couple,” Lup says. “Had a lot of downtime lately from the whole rezzing bizz. Specialty spellwork is ex-hausting.”

“Oh! Your school is evocation, right?” Angus says, leaning forward excitedly. “I think Taako expects me to stick with transmutation, but I want to consider all my options.”

“Evocation and necromancy,” Lup says with a grin. “Used to do transmutation too, so if you’ve got questions about schools let ‘em rip.”

“Why did you switch away from transmutation?” Angus asks. “Considering the nature of the spellwork you need for—I mean,” he flusters, embarrassed. “Sorry for prying, ma’am.”

“Nah,” Lup says easily. She gives Barry’s wrist a reassuring squeeze beneath the table and he relaxes the hand clenched on his knee.  “S’alright. You can finish your question.”

It’s normal for kids to be curious. Especially for Angus, who’s been building a career as a detective since he was what, eight? Barry gets called a genius, but at eight he was still figuring out how to tie shoelaces. His only concern is Lup’s comfort, so if she’s okay with fielding questions then Barry can relax. Or at least try to. Lup pulls his hand up to clasp it in hers on the tablecloth. They shouldn’t be having this conversation tonight. Not at Lup’s debut party, her reunion with life and family. She gives Angus a gracious smile, but Barry can tell she’s stressed.

Angus chews his lip and weighs his words carefully before continuing. “If I had to transform my body with magic—I don’t think I’d be comfortable letting someone else do the spells.”

“You mean like, why would I let Taako take point?” Lup says. “I guess it kind of just shook out like that, since evocation’s really way more my thing? And, well—”

“Hey, did I tell you kids about the time I tried to wax my own back hair?” Merle says, sneaking up behind them. Barry’s eyes slam shut in a grimace. Lup giggles over Mavis’s shrill groan.

Barry’s so grateful for Merle’s intervention that he almost doesn’t mind the distraction he’s chosen. “Please don’t uh, make me relive that,” he says. The incident was a disaster. Merle left waxy residue all over their shared bathroom. They were finding little sticky patches festooned with dust and curly grey hairs for months. Taako burned that bath rug and spent the next eighty years using the girls’ room exclusively.

“Hard to do shit to your own shit!” Merle says. “You think you’ve got an even coating, but then you rip it up and you’ve missed whole patches. Then there’s the flexibility issues—”

“Oh my god, Dad, shut up shut up _shut up_ ,” Mavis chants.

“—Especially with stubby arms like mine, I could barely reach!” Merle finishes triumphantly. Lup’s face down on the table, gasping helplessly. Easy for her to laugh; _she_ didn’t have to help clean.

“I mean, you never tried that again,” Barry says, searching desperately for any silver lining. “So at least you, uh, learned your lesson?”

“No he didn’t!” Hekuba calls from the bar. She has her margarita settled in her lap. Davenport’s resolutely chugging his beside her, muscle jumping beneath his eye. “I caught him at it right after we married.”

“Hey! It’s not like I remembered how it’d gone the first time!” Merle shouts back. By now virtually everyone is listening to their conversation. Angus has two fingers resting on a pen like he’s not sure whether he should take notes. Across the room Lucretia goes to refill her wine glass, guilty look on her face, and then just drinks directly from the bottle.

“No self-waxing, noted,” Angus says slowly.

Merle laughs and slaps him on the back. “Like I said, it’s hard to do shit to your own shit! There’s plenty of stuff in life you shouldn’t try to handle alone. Especially when your problem’s too close to your own skin! Never hesitate to get help, that’s what family’s for!”

Carey and Magnus whoop and clap at the end of Merle’s speech. Lup gives Merle two thumbs up and cheers. “That is some primo wisdom, gramps! Ten out of ten for dropping it into the back-waxing anecdote. You’ve enriched our lives.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Merle says, bowing with a flourish. “I’m here all night!”

And it is almost night. The sun nests in clouds low on the horizon, glinting off port-wine waves and casting the sky in deep purple. Barry’s seen this view from several worlds, including the one he was born on. His heart clenches. He can’t believe how lucky he is. He and his family have died dozens of times between them, but now they get to sit here and laugh, at home in a world impossibly familiar and wonderfully new.

Merle switches the music to something with a beat. He directs Magnus to shove tables away from the center of the floor. Lup rubs at Barry’s ankle with her foot beneath the table. He captures her toes between his ankles and squeezes, then cuddles into her side.

“You wanna go out there and cut a rug, Lup?” he asks.

“My man, Barry J. Bluejeans, wants to dance?” Lup says, one hand over her heart in mock surprise. She’s already pulling him to his feet. “A thousand times yes, babe. I’d dance with you forever.”


	3. Third time's the charm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup reconnects with her family (and proposes to her boyfriend).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blupjeans week prompt:
> 
> May 31 (HAHAHA this is late)- Day 6: Working Together - Either as Reapers or during Story and Song, what are they like as professionals rather than a couple  
> hot take: the Blups care not one whit for professionalism

Lup ambushes Davenport when they’re still both covered in sea-spray. She’s a mess, sharded phalanges tangled in her hair and raven feathers adhered to her robes by kraken gooze. He’s worse, even sans raven feathers, because he’s shorn off his mustache and let the rest of his hair grow out into a wild mullet. Sweat-clumped strands, frizzy bangs, the works.

Seeing him like that is almost the weirdest thing that’s happened today. Ghost pirates aside, she spent a hundred years with this man as her captain. Over that century he changed his appearance maybe the least of any of them. Six days out of seven he was well-groomed and professionally attired, like his IPRE superiors were going to stroll up to the Starblaster on cycle number whatever—decades after they were devoured—and demand an immediate conference. Now he’s gone grey and unkempt, and any vestiges of professionalism in his appearance exist only in Lup’s mind.

“So, to start with, it’s good to see you!” Lup says, by way of greeting. She directs this to Orla’s knees more so than her captain’s face. He’s positioned her bulk between them, slumping further and further into his gritty, salt-stiff coat. He nods abortively, distracted. Lup follows his gaze out to the wreckage dotting the horizon. Tries not to think about whether she should care that he cares about the loss of one boat.

Lup’s of the opinion that they’ve endured too much loss to dwell on anything. And she has more to look forward to. She knew, when she knelt before the Raven Queen, that she was consigning herself to eventually watch everything she’s known pass out of the world. In a few hundred years she and Barry will stand as the last witnesses to the Starblaster’s journey against eternity.

But right now, it’s a breezy summer day. The seagulls are cawing, the waves are rippling, and her brother’s flirting with his boyfriend astride the mantle of a giant kraken monster. She’s not trapped in ghost jail. She’s not even on duty. She’s kicking back on the Westbreak docks with her old captain. Davenport’s the chillest boss she’s ever had and basically family as well. Family who’s been avoiding her. And that just won’t do.

“Hey, I’ve got to ask the captain a question. Is it okay if we get some privacy, Orla?” Lup says, trying to not sound like she’s wheedling.

Davenport leans around Orla’s knee and narrows his eyes. “One: you don’t have scurvy. Two: Taako already tried that one.”

“Wow, excuse you. I have real legitimate health concerns and I was gonna say beriberi.”

Further down the dock, Magnus waves both arms and shouts something. He’s upside-down in the kraken’s grip, so this might be a concern, except that Taako’s Dominate Monster spell shouldn’t wear off for another…twenty minutes. Orla looks askance at the scene. Magnus waves harder.

“…I’ll go see if Merle and Barry need help,” Orla says. They’re wandering away from the docks, chatting while they comb the beach for debris. Merle’s collecting shells and bits of kelp. Barry’s probably collecting bones from the undead skeletons they just dispatched while Taako has Kravitz’s attention monopolized. Orla crosses the pier and hops down to the sand, nodding at Lup’s cheerful wave. Lup appreciates that she hasn’t turned into a starstruck fan after recognizing them all from the Story. She hasn’t even asked prying questions about the reaper business.

“I like Orla,” Lup declares, letting Davenport avoid eye contact. “She’s a pretty good pick for hunting undead pirate fleets. You know, aside from the literal reapers in your family you _didn’t even call_.”

Davenport lifts his chin and sets his jaw in challenge. “I didn’t think you guys were doing the reaper gig anymore, and I s-still wrote you both letters. You didn’t reply.”

“They have magical talky stones on this plane, dude. Don’t wait for me or Barry to check our PO box. Reaper training is eating all our freaking time and the chances of us quitting are _zilch_. I like the job and all, but it’s not strictly a voluntary sitch for us.” The corners of Lup’s smile pinch. Davenport gives an awkward twitch and averts his gaze.

His tone doesn’t sound apologetic, but she’s known him for too long to miss that he’s giving ground. “You guys…you guys have never cared about following someone else’s rules. What about all those necromancy cults you ran out on?”

She hears the words he doesn’t say. A few months ago they would’ve sounded the same from her: everything held constant across their journey was changed behind their backs. The shape of this world is strange, made stranger by the way their family changed without them. They stagnated while their loved ones rebuilt themselves for new lives.

Barry never gave up on her, and she got to be at Taako’s side even before he remembered she existed. That’s made all the difference. “Yeah, that was a fun con to run, but only cos we knew we were saying bye to them at the end of the year no matter what. Those dark dorkos couldn’t get their revenge when we were skipping out on their whole planar system.”

She wishes she could kneel to Davenport’s eye level without seeming condescending. Things worked out in the end. That’s the lifeline she clings to on those long nights she spends curled in Barry’s lap, with every lamp in the room blazing to keep the darkness at bay. She’s not sure what she could take comfort in if she was fighting static in her own mind instead. “Like…this is it, man. This plane is our chance to build a home. I don’t wanna be a fugitive from the big RQ. Sure, it kinda sucks to have my fate picked for me like this. But it’s better than watching worlds get eaten by Johnny Voreman.”

“You were with the IPRE for…what, twenty years, Lup?” Davenport says. His voice hitches, either on mechanics or emotion. It’s grown rough in a way that Lup hasn’t learned to read. “And you were, were itching to get the hell out of dodge. Remember what you said about being done with our world, at that press conference?”

She wouldn’t, except for that decade she spent with only her memories for company. “Yup. Crushed it. The IPRE gave me the opportunity of a lifetime, and that’s great—like, that was great even before the Starblaster saved all our lives like, a zillion times. But…yeah.”

“I never understood it,” Davenport says. “I don’t…I need that sense of purpose, Lup. What you have with the Raven Queen now, I guess. I can’t imagine feeling…suffocated by it. When Lu-Lucretia wiped out all knowledge of the IPRE…that wrecked my whole shit.”

Lup inhales sharply. “I’m so fucking sorry. I—”

“Don’t be,” he says, cutting her off. “It worked out, in the end. I just need to p-pull it together.”

“Dude,” Lup says. She gives up standing and plunks down on her butt next to him. “I mean, this pirate-hunting thing you called was pretty rad? I was psyched to be here for this, glad you saved me and my man some tailbones to kick. But like…we should hang out. Just blaze it. I don’t care if you feel like a wreck. I miss you.”

Davenport’s breath hitches. Lup snakes an arm behind his back. The kraken slime on her shoulders is level with the salty muck on his coat and she’s about to combine them into a gross mess of affection. “Hug train pulling into the station. C’mon, this is for me too.”

“Fine,” he says. He lets her yank him by the crook of her elbow. He’s probably missed that she’s a lot more touchy-feely, post umbrella, but he’ll learn. She’s gonna make sure he’s around to learn. He drums fingers on her forearm where it rests against his stomach. He stands a couple heads taller than her like this. Lup leans forward to glimpse his face and finds that he’s still studying the horizon. “I guess I did…manage to get almost the whole crew back together for this one.”

Lup’s ears flick up. A small, crusty raven feather goes flying. “Oh shit, yeah! We’re just missing Luce.”

“I did write to her,” Davenport says, responding to an accusation she didn’t voice. “There’s a cock-and-bull story in those letters about some debt, but I sent all of them.”

“We need to get you a stone of farspeech,” Lup says, recrossing her legs under her robes. “I don’t know how you’ve survived without one for this long.”

Davenport tenses against her shoulder. “I…It’s…Look, I’m actually glad we’re having this, this conversation face-to-face. Helps me organize my words. You never got the, the full effect of that static. But it was a real whammy.”

“We need to have more face time,” Lup says empathically. Because she can’t imagine. Her mind was the only thing she had, those long years, and she wore ruts in the landscape of her brain for want of anything else in her cramped little world. Her brain threatens to swallow her still, some days, rising up inexorably until her senses are overwhelmed and she’s at the mercy of her thoughts. Having them sucked away by static—turning _off_ , freed from herself—almost sounds like a blessing.

The shape of her trauma is so different from his. She can’t sympathize, but she can try and _help_ , because she loves him and he needs her. They made it through a hundred and one apocalypses because they were a family. It’s completely unfair that they’d fall apart now.

Lup won’t stand for it. She’s not losing any of her people, not ever again. Even if they’re claimed by the astral sea she’ll stand at its shore and howl. Death can’t scare her; not when it was temporary, not now that she’s one of Her avatars.

She can imagine exactly what it was like when Taako and Barry lost her. That scares her more than anything.

“Barry! Get over here!” Lup shouts. He pivots in the sand and dashes. Running has never been among his many competencies, but he quite literally drops everything to bolt to her side. She giggles against Davenport’s coat, ecstatic with her goofy, glorious man.

“Are we hugging?” he asks, swinging his bulk up onto the pier. His stride’s lost some of its urgency now that he sees they’re well. “Hey Dav.”

Lup lets Davenport go so they can face Barry, but she doesn’t stand. She kneels.

“Barry J. Bluejeans,” she begins. She tears her tights open against the rough pier at the same moment he nearly falls over, so there’s a few seconds of laughter and breathless scrambling before they pull themselves together. She tries to hug him around his middle, smushing her face into his shirt, so he drops to the pier and kneels with her. They lock arms around each other’s shoulders.

“You,” Lup says, breath puffing little strands of hair away from Barry’s ear, “have been my main babe, my favorite person in a sexy way, for like an entire lifetime. If we’d been legally married for all those years we’d be setting some kind of record for sure. I want to get started on that.”

Barry’s grinning so wide she can feel it against her cheek. “Holy shit,” he says, like this isn’t the third time one of them has proposed to the other. Like he’s even happier this time than the first. “Holy shit, yes. Heck yes.”

“Lemme finish!” Lup laughs and boops his nose. “I’m on a roll here! I need to tell you about how I can definitively say you are a catch. See exhibit: all those worlds we went to. I have had my pick of the multiverse and it’s _you_. With Davenport and probably the RQ as my witness—shoutout to Birdmama, if you’re listening—I wanna get hitched again.”

“Lup, babe—I—you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Barry says in a rush, squeezing her tight. “And I mean it. I mean it every time you walk into a room, basically. I love you more than anything. Till—till long past when death would’ve done us part.”

“Definitely. _Five-_ ever, even. I love you too,” Lup beams. She goes in for a kiss, and this is how they discover that she’s still got some dried kraken gooze on her upper lip. Barry licks his thumb and rubs it off the bow of her grinning mouth.

“I want you to marry us, Captain,” Lup says, when that desperate, sucking need inside her abates and she can let Barry go. The first time they got married was on the deck of the Starblaster in an empty world, on a slow cycle where they almost lost Taako to a stupid accident. There was no way to make it official. Davenport showed them the forms anyway, recreated from memory—IPRE officers married on prolonged mission. Lucretia framed them; they’re still hanging in Barry’s room on the Starblaster, each page displayed proudly.

Those papers, and a few dirt samples, were all that survived that world until recently. Lup’s been working on a little something to take Barry back there for another proposal. Now she’s glad she didn’t wait. Seeing the attentive tilt of Davenport’s ears and his wavering smile is better.

“Are you sure—shouldn’t you…?” Davenport says. “C-Carey and Killian—isn’t Merle officiating for them?”

“I heard my name!” Merle calls, scrambling onto the pier with even less grace than Barry. Orla gives him a reluctant boost up by his sandy birkenstocks. “What am I supposed to be officiating?”

“Carey and Killian’s wedding,” Barry prompts. “It’s in like three weeks, _Merle_. We RVSP’d months ago!”

“Oh yeah!”

“Actually,” Davenport says, “Barry and Lup wanna get remarried, too, and—I don’t think I’ll—”

Lup’s burning with a need to interrupt him, to head his negativity off before he devalues himself. But. She knows how important it is, giving him the chance to find his words. She waits.

“I don’t think I’m the right man for the job,” he finishes lamely, haltingly. Merle claps him on the back.

“Well, the kids asked you, not me! They know what they’re doin’.”

“I _so_ know what I’m about, Cap’n,” Lup says. Kneeling puts her at eye-level with him and Merle. With Orla standing over a tableau of hunched conspirators they may only have seconds before her brother detects drama and barrels in. “I want you to do it. Please.”

Davenport’s ears droop. “I want to say yes, Lup. You know I do. B-but I don’t know if I can.”

“There’s no rush to get ready,” Barry says warmly, clapping Davenport on the shoulder. “Seriously, we’ve got—we’ve got years. An eternity. Hell, I didn’t even buy a ring yet, shit!”

“You kids aren’t allowed to upstage Carrian and Killie’s wedding anyway,” Merle says. “It’s a big deal when saviors of the world get married! And it’ll be the first time all of us have been in the same room since V-day.”

“Oh my shit is ‘V-day’ VORE-day?” Lup cackles, fist-bumping Merle. Then she surges to her feet. “But no, it’s not gonna be, cos we’re all gonna be in the same room _today_. I just proposed to my man, this is a big deal!”

Taako’s Dominate Monster spell ends before she finishes materializing her scythe. The kraken sweeps a tentacle up through the pier and the explosion of splintered wood heralds twenty minutes of pure chaos. By the end of it Magnus is nearly drowned, Lup and Barry are marginally cleaner from having plunged into the sea to save him, Merle’s out of spell slots, and Taako’s hair is ruined.

They’re left standing on a mostly-destroyed pier with about fifteen tons of calamari. Someone’s gonna have to explain what happened to the Westbreak authorities, probably. “This,” Kravitz pants, ringing seawater out of his locs, “has been a debacle unrivaled by—”

Lup knows when her boss is revving up for a dramatic speech. She’s about to interrupt with her sure-to-be-well-received demand that they fudge reaper rules to portal everyone up to the moon. Except Merle chooses that moment to hand Barry the fistful of vertebrae he dropped on the beach. Kravitz makes a sound like an overheating teakettle and launches into an impassioned rant, verging on hysteria after he almost swallows a feather. Taako ends up having to quash him by shoving his face in the Cloak of the Manta Ray.

“Are we _good_ here? Can we _go?_ ” he asks, dodging around Kravitz’s waving arms to pat his hair. “Because it’s been a barrel of laughs, but I think I have _salt_ in my _buttcrack_ —"

Lup rends the air with her scythe and a colossal tearing sound like a thunderclap in the void. Kravitz pales at her technique. “One-stop expressway to the moon! Go go go!”

Magnus is through before she’s even finished. Everyone scrambles after, even Orla, culminating in a colossal pileup in Lucretia’s office. Lucretia’s seated behind her desk, elbows up, book held protectively at her chest, and eyes wide as saucers. Lup collides with Orla’s back and starts a chain reaction that topples their assemblage like dominos. Merle bonks his head off the lip of Lucretia’s desk, Magnus and Taako faceplant across her paperwork.

“Lup, _why_ ,” Kravitz asks from the floor. He’s staring at the ceiling like he can see the spirit of his dignity there, flipping the bird as it departs for the heavens. Taako groans theatrically and rolls over on the desk. Then he keeps rolling, wet cape _splak-splak-splakking_ until he clears the surface and stumbles to the floor. He leaves a tiny severed tentacle tip suckered to Lucretia’s papers.

“I want to grab a bite with all my favorite people, because Barry and I are getting married again!” Lup chirps, the sound of a grenade pin dropping on a battlefield.

Everyone is very very still until Taako echoes Kravitz’s teakettle shriek.

The yelling doesn’t end after they spill out into the hallway, Taako having switched tacks mid-rant to a demand for fresh air, fucking _now_ , before he suffocates from their combined stench. Davenport manages to get in a quiet apology to Orla for hijacking her while Lucretia insists they detour through the nearest showers, because “We’re not going to the cafeteria smelling like squidshit! Everyone will blow chunks and create a putrescent medley of _stank_.”

They end up in the reclaimers’ old dorm, not the cafeteria. Lup shows up last and finds Magnus handing out cold poptarts and warm soda. Taako’s not entertaining anyone but himself. He’s seated on the coffee table across from Kravitz, carefully sweeping eyeliner across his closed lids. Kravitz has been shoved into an outfit far more TaakoTM Brand, way too sequined for practicality, but he’s rocking it.

Lup doesn’t even try to find an open seat. She situates herself in Barry’s lap, cradling four frames wrapped in familiar dishtowels against her chest. “From the Starblaster,” she says to Davenport, handing them off. He unwraps the forms he filled out nearly seventy years ago, pristine under enchanted glass. “I figure we have a good excuse for being massively late on filing them.”

“I want photocopies of those,” Barry interrupts, resting his chin on Lup’s shoulder. “Or wait, can we keep the originals?”

“Filing them,” Davenport repeats, face blank.

Lup hadn’t wanted to say anything too early, in case her designs don’t come to fruition. But it’s past time for a little hope. “I’ve been kind of working on these planar belt things? Basically, I think we might be able to visit other planes. For short stretches. Without tearing the fabric of the universe or pulping our corporeal forms, is what I’m saying.”

“Holy shit,” Davenport breathes. “That would—holy shit.”

“Real short stretches,” Barry says apologetically. “The math says not even two hours. It’s something, at least.”

“It’s _everything_ ,” Davenport breathes. “You know—we all know,” he says, and this time his voice rings louder. Still halting and rough, but unmistakably in the tones of their commanding officer. Everyone in the room swivels to him, even Kravitz and Orla. “We all know that the original purpose of the Starblaster’s mission was to venture to the outer reaches of our planar system. We were to discover if our planar system could be exited, in service of finding if any worlds lay beyond ours. We hoped, someday, to visit them. We weren’t—we weren’t sure that last bit would happen in my lifetime.”

“Well, we exceeded expectations. Natch,” Taako says.

“Lup and Barry think they might have a way to t-turn in our data,” Davenport says. Lucretia’s eyebrows fly to her hairline.

“That would—that wealth of knowledge would more than validate all the IPRE’s efforts,” she says.

Davenport takes a deep breath and says what they’re all thinking. “If there’s anyone else left.”

Merle shrugs. “Even if there’s not, there will be.” Everyone else side-eyes him. “What? We could _found_ the IPRE. We did all those chumps’ jobs well enough.”

“I mean, let’s not—let’s not _cast aspersions_ on all the little people,” Taako drawls. “But we _are_ heroes of the multiverse and we  _do_ deserve a parade. And our stipends.”

Merle chuckles. It comes out kind of as a warble, because Magnus is bouncing his cushion so hard that the whole couch is rocking. “I bet my 401k’s looking pretty good after a hundred years.”

Lup rolls her eyes. “I will keep everyone updated vis-à-vis planar shenanigans. But, like, doubt we count as active officers anymore. We’d’ve been MIA if anyone was around to make any kind of decision.”

“Yeah,” Davenport says, looking down at the frames in his lap. “I don’t know if—if we can file these, after all.”

Lup sits up straight. Barry oofs out a little breath, because she accidentally elbows his gut in the process. “We _were_ active officers when you filled out that paperwork,” Lup says. “You were in fact the highest ranking IPRE officer in existence, natch, so you could’ve married us on a bar napkin and it’d still be valid. But you went to all this work to make the forms _legit_. They gotta respect that.”

“I do wanna be legally married on the plane we were born on,” Barry says, quietly. “My mom’d appreciate it.”

“For us, Cap’n?” Lup asks. “C’mon, we’ll figure something out. We’ll like, dump them through a wormhole or something if we can’t take them in person. But, en-gee-ell, the odds are looking pretty decent that we can go kick down their door.”

Davenport chuckles. Without his mustache it looks weird. But change isn’t bad. Lup is, in fact, feeling favorably disposed towards change. “Yeah, that sounds good. That sounds real good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah hey I don't abandon fic. surprise! the last chapter is gonna come out way faster than this one, honest
> 
> here's the ending I redid after figuring that Lup probably hadn't developed the planar belts as of the pirate liveshow:
> 
>    
> ************************  
>  
> 
> “I want photocopies of those,” Barry interrupts, resting his chin on Lup’s shoulder. “Or wait, can we keep the originals?”
> 
> “You guys don’t have to file anything,” Davenport says, folding his hands. Shorn of his ruined coat—Lup bets Taako didn’t let it in the door—he doesn’t look so small anymore, not even against the highbacked kitchen chair. “We’re not active IPRE officers anymore. C-can’t be, only visiting for an hour at a t-time.”
> 
> “Yeah, but we were when you filled out that paperwork,” Lup says. “You were in fact the highest ranking IPRE officer in existence, natch, so you could’ve married us on a bar napkin and it’d still be valid. But you went to all this work to make the forms legit. They gotta respect that.”
> 
> “I do wanna be married on the plane we were born on,” Barry says, quietly. “My mom’d appreciate it.”
> 
> “For us, Cap?” Lup asks. “C’mon, we’ve got four belts. We’ll take Taako. We’re heroes there—they won’t give us the runaround. And if they do we can yell at them.”
> 
> “Drama twin powers activate,” Taako drawls. Lup shoots him a thumbs up.
> 
> Davenport chuckles. Without his mustache it looks weird. But change isn’t bad. Lup is, in fact, feeling favorably disposed towards change. “Yeah, that sounds good. That sounds real good.”
> 
> ************************
> 
> Thanks for the kudos I received during the unintentional hiatus. Y'all are the reason this got bumped back up to the top of my WIP list. =)


	4. The beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was 'firsts', and Barry and Lup are finally buying a house (with a lot of help from Taako).

Taako and Lup made extravagant plans several lifetimes ago. When they were two dirty kids hitching rides on the backs of wagons and daydreaming about luxuries they’d never seen. This is one of the things Barry loves about Lup: ambition glows inside her like an unquenchable fire. Her grip on the world is savage, and her passion burns and cleanses and leaves everything brighter in its wake.

She and Barry were together for ages before she shared her childhood dreams. They’d become a weakness, another facet of a brutal childhood to cage behind closed lips. It was only twenty years ago, when they were still racing against time to capture the Light of Creation with an eye towards creating their relics, that Lup recounted some of her and Taako’s ‘plans’. They wanted to live in a castle as large as they imagined cities to be. Their home would have pristine beaches and gardens of jewels, closets as large as shopping arcades and larders the size of restaurants. They’d have dozens of servants who would love them because they’d be paid handsomely and dressed sumptuously—Taako scribbled outfit designs on greasy scraps of paper that went transparent when Lup held them up to sunlight for scrutiny.

Lup recounted all this bitterly, derisively, unfairly critical of her childish ideas. Barry rolled on top of her and kissed her eyelids. His crinkled smile made tears trickle down to the end of his nose as he told her she deserved all that and more.

Once upon a time the twins thought they were going to become the best wizards in the universe, and live in a giant castle, and always be together.

Barry thinks two out of three ain’t bad. In this world, when he brought Lup’s childhood dreams up with her again, he did so with the backing of her brother and a real estate catalog.

Being a reaper doesn’t pay a salary they can submit to a bank. But Taako’s building his brand into a small empire. His credit’s more than good enough for a lavish mansion in Neverwinter. He doesn’t want to rattle around in one, waiting through long weeks while Angus is off at school and Barry, Lup, and Kravitz are stuck at work, so they didn’t look at any of those.

Last year they got a realtor. Today she and Ren are helping them close the sale on their new house. Denise is a thickset tiefling with a portfolio thicker than Barry’s glasses, an overt streak of architectural geekery, and a flexible patience for bullshit rooted in steel. Lup loves her. Taako begrudgingly respects her, but thinks she’s kind of boring because she doesn’t riff on his goofs. Barry’s infinitely grateful to her for getting them through the nightmare of going straight from thirty-hour stakeouts of cultists, or battles with demons, to viewing nice houses with carpets that take bloodstains _way_ too easily. She knows people who do steam cleaning and keeps a tarp in her trunk.

Denise found them a sprawling sort of cross between a beachside villa and ancient farmhouse perched atop a cliff on the outskirts of Neverwinter. There’s a narrow set of stairs down to a strip of beach below that Taako can bypass with Feather Fall, about ten acres of west-facing windows that let in enough sunlight to roast a turkey—so, almost enough for the twins to enjoy their afternoon naps—and dozens of weird nooks and crannies from decades’ worth of expansions by parties who never exchanged a ‘hello’. There are one-point-five kitchens, five-and-three-quarters bedrooms, six entire bathrooms, living rooms both formal and fated to be used as a lab, a basement that looks like it was once a prison, a barn converted into a _ballroom_ , and actual, honest-to-god secret passages. There’s even a backyard shed buried under monstrously large rosebushes that Barry could hide bodies in, with even odds that Kravitz—who still can’t reliably navigate from the front door to the parlor—will never find them.

It’s perfect. They lost Angus five steps inside the door. He’s intent on creating a comprehensive map; secret passages, hidden closets, and all. Taako told him to pick his favorites to keep. Magnus, ostensibly, is supervising. He’s supposed to chase after Angus while taking measurements for commissioned furniture. Barry’s peripherally aware of that plan unraveling but chooses to believe things are going to be fine. If Angus is smart enough to elude Magnus then he’s also smart enough to get himself out of any trouble he finds.

Barry and Lup might still get a place for just the two of them. The twins have earned the right to cling to each other. If they survived a century crammed into a mid-sized yacht built for a two-month trip, then they can survive for a few years in a house large enough that Taako has to holler through six rooms at top volume to get an update on Angus’s status (he’s found a fourth attic and a third, hidden, obviously DIY circuit breaker. Barry clenches a smile and reminds himself that future electrical issues can’t be made his problem if he’s away at work on another plane of existence.)

“Mr. Bluejeans,” Denise says, after Taako and his heels click their way back across the vast expanse of kitchen number one. “I need you to sign to confirm your banking information.”

“Snap to it, Barold,” Taako says.

Denise pauses halfway through spreading the contents of a leather folder across the quartz countertop. She blinks at Taako. “Remember, we secured the mortgage under _your_ name, so we wouldn’t have to figure out how to open a line of credit with spooky shiny artifacts from Death herself.”

Taako leans over the counter, frowning as he reads upside-down. “Does it or does it not say ‘Bluejeans’ on…Ren! When did you do this to me?!”

Ren, placid, turns away from her conversation. Barry steps in and maneuvers Lup to lean against his side so she can hang off him while she laughs herself sick. “Well, sir, remember when we were establishing a legal identity for you? You blew off my questions about your last name, so I just went with the nearest thing.”

Taako gapes. “I told you to put something like ‘you know, from TV’!” His shout hits a frequency that would command the attention of Magnus’s dogs and Kravitz, were they not banned from the nice new hardwood flooring and covering for Lup and Barry on the astral plane, respectively.

Ren keeps her gaze level and brushes off Taako’s dramatics. “You can’t use your tagline as a surname, boss.”

“No, I mean—chop it up! ‘Yunofromteevee’ or something,” he says, scrawling the letters midair in glowing pink.

“Well, sorry I didn’t decode your word puzzle. I can get it changed by next…month.”

Lup gasps one last wheeze and straightens up. “Wait! Ko, Koko, Taakster, Takaroni-and-cheese—”

“Oh gods, _die_. What, Lup?”

“You need to leave it. Cos here’s what I’m thinking—Kravitz Bluejeans. This is a thing you can do to the _Grim Reaper_ , you gotta.”

Kravitz has been using his surname as his first and only since basically the last geological era. Kravitz has been carrying around an engagement ring in his pocket since last week. Everybody knows, because he was born before subtlety was invented, and also because he had to use Taako’s checkbook to make the purchase.

Lup and Taako stand stock-still for a moment, faces mirrored until Taako’s breaks into a smirk. “Shit, you’re right, that’s gold.”

Lup claps delightedly. “I know I’m right. Please please _please?”_

“Yeah, deffo. It’ll be funny for a few years at least.”

“You guys know that’s not a real name, right?” Barry says. “I didn’t start going by ‘Bluejeans’ until joining the IPRE.”

“Everyone knows,” Denise says, smiling gently. “It was in the Story.”

Barry sighs. “It’s a pain in the ass to keep track of which parts of my life got broadcast to—to half the multiverse.”

“Price of fame.” Taako shrugs his shoulders, utterly disingenuous. For three Sundays in a row he’s dragged Barry out on fishing trips in increasingly remote locations. Hard to get downtime downtown when every stranger off the street feels like they’re your friend. Barry thinks Taako never guessed how much the lack of privacy would rankle.

Ren goes to help Denise walk Taako through the paperwork. Lup stretches and wanders by, telegraphing her glee at foisting everything off on her twin. She waves cheekily at Taako and heads for the backdoor. Taako flips her off and shoos Barry out after her.

He steps out into an empty porch, concrete expanse overlooking wild grass that’s shin-deep and browning in the chill of an early winter. He turns his back to shut the sliding door and Lup collides with him. She shoves him up against the glass and sticks her hands down his collar. His hands find her waist as she grips his jaw and angles his chin up, sliding her tongue into his mouth. They can do this whenever they want, now—Barry can reach out and she’s there, familiar and beloved, a bright fire leaping into his hands.

Or maybe not whenever they want.  Successive thunks shake the door at Barry’s back. He and Lup turn to see that Taako’s summoned a mage hand to beat on the glass. Lup tugs Barry out into the yard, laughing as they flee like guilty children.

They settle into an ambling walk and circle the building. It’s just… _so_ nice. The woods are as close as the city proper. They’ll have birdsong in the morning and dinners out in the evening. They can spend their days alone and at peace, or take advantage of the space and invite family over for raucous gatherings.

A great majority of their time belongs to the Raven Queen, but in return they get to be alive in this world. They spend their free hours together in love. They’ll never endure another sleepless night desperately searching for the Light. He’ll never again feel the pit of his stomach swoop and fall as the Starblaster ascends with the Hunger roiling below, wondering if this is the time the black tendrils finally take them. Blessedly, that death will remain a mystery.

Barry’s intimately acquainted with other deaths. He’s been stabbed, poisoned, crushed, and executed four different ways. He didn’t learn anything about those distant, foreign astral planes: the crew doesn’t remember what their souls experienced before the bond engine knit them back together. Speculation was a source of grim amusement on slow days. But now Barry knows what the shape of his end looks like.

It looks like this: endless days blurring together until he no longer counts each one as precious. Uncountable shining, irreplaceable moments, passed privately with Lup or in the open embrace of the rest of their family. Routine weaving contentment into his aging bones. Joy accumulating until his soul can’t encompass it all, and the peace of the astral sea beyond that, billions of souls glittering like stars beneath its waters.

Someday soon he’ll wake up dead and go to work. He’ll stand at the shore of the sea with Lup at his side just as she is now, shouldering open the barn doors in a din of screeching hinges and shower of dust. He takes her hand and follows her into the empty ballroom. He’ll take her hand in the future too, following her for the rest of his life and beyond. Death herself promised to never do them part.

The interior of the barn’s a miasma of dust motes caught suspended in thin beams of sunlight filtering through grimy windows. Lup drags her heels to kick up flurries thick as snowfall from the concrete floor. Barry can still see the tracks of old footsteps from their first inspection weeks ago, circling the perimeter of the room and scuffing at the light outlines of long-removed stalls. Lofted rafters sit heavily overhead, cracked wood and chipped paint throw into stark relief by the Dancing Lights he sends drifting up like balloons.

“Bird Mama better let Skellingman out ASAP,” Lup says. She casts a gust and sends a whirlwind of dust skittering out the door. There’s absolutely no perceptible improvement. She huffs, frustrated, then hacks a cough. Barry thumps her back. “Isn’t his fancy-ass piano getting here like, Friday?”

“Yup,” Barry says. “It’s—we’ve got a lot of fuckin’ work to do, getting this room, uh…”

“Noooot gross? Vile, disgusting, filthy?”

Barry laughs. “So I take it we didn’t sneak out here for sex.”

Lup plants a hand in his chest and shoves him away, mock-indignation tugging at the corners of her mouth. He goes. She changes her mind and snags his belt loops with her thumbs. He lets her tug him back. She pries out his shirt from his waistband and runs her fingertips across his flanks and belly until he shivers. Content, she shoves him away again, snatching his hand.

She leads him over to the windows, their clasped hands swinging between them in amiable silence.  Her red mage-hand flickers into being overhead. Barry joins her efforts. Ten minutes later they’ve thrown all the windows open without letting go of each other or acquiring a coating of grime. Bracing air swirls with eddies of dust. Lup helps it along by lighting trails of phantasmal candleflames across the floor, updrafts blooming red with burning specks.

It all smells terrible. Barry pinches his nose and grins to himself as Lup, cackling, catches stray leaves in her net of flame. They spark vermillion and gold and poof into ash. “That’s one way to do it,” he says. “We’ll save a lot of time if you just burn this whole place down, how ‘bout.”

“Ooh, I bet _that’d_ piss off our insurers,” Lup laughs. “D’you think they’d go cheaper with the barn gone, or would they jack our premiums up?”

“They’re probably not big fans of arson, true,” Barry says.

“Yeah, and I don’t wanna listen to Kravitz bitch about ‘lapses in judgment’.”

“You mean more than he does already, right?” Barry tugs her to face him and grabs her other hand.

“He’s gotta give it a rest eventually!” Lup pinches her mouth and blows out a puff of air through wobbling lips. She’s adorable. “It’s gonna really suck for his blood pressure if he can’t unwind, since he’s gonna be stuck with us for, hmmmmm _…ever_?”

Barry swings their hands between them. Gods, he’s just as smitten now as he’s ever been. “I feel like—like maybe we should try going a couple years without doing anything crazy? See if that helps?”

Lup’s smile turns wicked. “Come to think, actually? Undead skeleboys probably don’t have to worry about their blood pressure. We’re alllll good.”

Barry laughs and shoves her. She yanks him forward by the wrists until he’s off-balance, then whirls to turn his fall into a dip. He grins up at her. She leans down and kisses him. He stays there in her arms as she works his mouth open, her embrace the only thing keeping him from crashing to the ground.

Long minutes later, her arms tremble and she tugs him back to standing. He licks his swollen lips and tastes her chapstick. His side smarts where the ring on her finger pressed a divot into his skin. “If burning this place down’s off the table then let’s—let’s get married in here.”

Her eyes light up. She tilts her chin upwards and the Dancing Lights in the rafters play rainbow hues across her face. She’s lovely. “Ooh—I bet we can get lights up in the rafters just like this, but even brighter—gold, d’you think? Maybe some reds or oranges too. And we can get those sparkly streamers, and we’ll have the piano in the corner...”

“We can put up—like, a platform,” Barry says, excitement catching in his throat. “We can—remember Legato? I’ve been playing around with some more ideas for a composition kind of like that. Nothing that new, but…more. We could perform again. Half our family didn’t get to see the first time.”

“Gods, you’re brilliant,” Lup says, kissing him. “But you’ve been holding out on me, jerk! I want in on this music biz!”

“It’s not like I’ve—” Lup peppers his cheeks with kisses while he wheezes laughter. “I haven’t touched an instrument in years, it’s all in my head—”

He gives up fending her off. By the time she’s through with him, his glasses are smudged to hell and back and his bangs are irredeemably ruffled. She drags her fingers through them one last time for good measure before letting him catch his breath.

“The problem with me being so excited to marry you is that now we’ve _gotta_ clean,” she says. “Like, really get in there with the scrubbing. I don’t wanna snort dust when we rehearse in here.”

“We’ve got time,” Barry says. He laces their fingers back together. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

This place could be beautiful. It’s got the bones of something great; old, storied wood, fresh air, the crash of the sea nearby, and more space than they know what to do with. And it’s all theirs, maybe forever. They don’t have to leave when the year turns. They’re going to make a home here, together, and there’s nothing else they would rather do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am thrilled to finally have this project finished. Please leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed. =)
> 
> Catch me on tumblr at tansyfandom. Screaming helps make the words go.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a kudos if you enjoyed  
> Catch me on tumblr @tansyfandom


End file.
